The Perils of the Trail
by ShadowGuard23
Summary: Set near the end of the Force Awakens; On the trail of Luke Skywalker, the crew of the Millennium Falcon is trapped in deep space, alongside a new threat that could tip the war in the favour of the Resistance. Meanwhile, the First Order dispatches it's finest hunters after the Last Jedi, culminating in a deadly game of kill-or-be-killed that must be eluded if Rey is find Skywalker.


WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.

The following account documents events within the Force Awakens. If you have not watched the movie, stop reading immediately, get a ticket and watch it. Right now. It's no Phantom Menace. Secondly, yes, this will entail the introduction of a fully original faction into the Star Wars Universe. No adult themes, but there is certainly a lot of violence to come, that may change the rating in the future. Be advised, if you have not watched the movie, this is your last chance to turn back now before spoilers ruin your experience.

Set in the brief interlude at the end of the movie, where the film compresses Rey's retracing of Luke's footsteps into a few short moments, as the scattered remnants of the New Republic arms for war, the First Order's fleet is set upon the stars, and in the darkest reaches of uncharted space, a lone vessel patrols untouched borders.

* * *

'Cycle all communication codes; switch to frequency twelve.'

'Cycling all communication codes, Bridgemaster. Ensign Perinius, raise maintenance unit seven; power fluctuation in secondary grid B-Nineteen.'

'All gun crews, stand by for relief of duty. Reserve teams to your positions. Changing of the guard in...three minutes.'

The chronometer fell away from the darkened eyes that had scrutinized it's message, dropping once again to the armored waist of Eridus Providus, silently clicking away before an armored gauntlet tugged at the black fabric lining it's edge, concealing the instrument from a careless glance once again, preserving the trim figure to the naked eye.

Aside from a light lace of silver tinged steel ran like a web across his back, and breast, the Bridgemaster was a grim sight, clad head to toe in a jet black that was all but indiscriminate from the darkness of the void. Even his face all but concealed from an obtrusive glance, behind the rebreather that clung to the region that had once harbored his mouth. All but the eyes; a pair of seemingly unresponsive pupils that stared out into the vast emptiness of space.

No one on the bridge questioned his ceaseless vigil; by now, Providus had established his unwillingness to dwell on the subject of his tendency to seek refuge in the darkness, though there was one aboard his vessel that would, on occasion, query him out of concern: a rare quality few genuinely understood, entirely bereft of self-serving curiosity.

And the answer to that one was usually a disparaging reply that clearly welcomed no further display of interest.

Of course, solitude was never to last.

'Bridgemaster, contact detected, closing, fast.'

'Asteroid?'

'Speed measured at FTL. Matches no known contacts. And it's big.'

'Ship?'

'Negative; too large for a ship. New munition, perhaps?'

'ETA?'

'Twelve seconds. Interdiction buoy?'

'Engage.'

It all occurred in a moment of seconds; the low hum of power that marked the eerie song of the gravity well generator buried deep within the holds his ship, and the ever present tug upon his vessel, as the pressure of gravity suddenly seized hold. She did not creak, nor groan in protest, but Providus could feel the strain upon her form, through the steel plate beneath him. It was one of the reasons he loathed to maintain the interdiction systems for any period of time that exceeded necessity, and it was with great gladness that he felt the pressure upon his pride slowly abate, as the primed generator dropped away from his vessel into the darkness of space, all but disappearing amid the veil of stars.

'Stand all gun-crews to alert: possible Outcast projective inbound, and put all teams to combat alert. Release all safeties on flank batteries, and lock anticipated coordinates...

There were more commands he had rattled off, but they were lost amid the explosion that shook the vessel, as the shockwaves of their newfound prey was torn out of lightspeed.

Prey; Providus still did not know why he referred to them as such. He was no pirate, and was certainly not on a warpath to annihilate whatever lifeform crossed his sensors; it was a mere force of habit; a relic of his days spent slogging through the mud of planet based warfare, amid his brethren within the Shadow Guard. Besides, it was a hideous misuse of the term to apply to the mass that filled his viewport, since it's usage might have led one to believe that he, Eridus Providus of the _Dauntless Resolve_ , had the titan before him at his mercy.

Despite his years of command, Providus could scarcely believe his eyes. The _Dauntless_ was the largest ship he had ever known amid his venerable service amid the furthest reaches Council Space; the product of nearly seven years of concentrated effort amid the shipyards held high above Titan, but what unraveled before him easily dwarfed the vessel he called home. Although it was insufficient to insult his flagship by doubling its allotted size, it was naught to sneeze at. Already, Providus' experienced eye was attempting to calculate just how much firepower he had pulled out of lightspeed; certainly far more than the typical slug the Outcasts he had been sent to hunt down were known to fire into Council Space at absurd velocities in preparation for one of their blood hunts. The dagger shaped titan was easily in excess of two thousand kilometers in length, though he was not quite certain if it could have reached three such measurements. Perhaps it fell just short of such, but it was a detail that scarcely provided any consolation to the stunned Bridgemaster; whatever the ship was, it was clearly bristling with firepower, and would probably have few qualms with turning his own tug, of maybe a thousand and six hundred kilometers in length, into a slag heap.

'Inbound signal,' an ensign was muttering, through his eyes were still bound upon the leviathan that filled the viewport, 'they might...be trying to establish a comm link-'

'Initiate communications,' Providus ordered, attempting to recompose himself in a futile attempt, 'and bring our secondary generators online; prepare to flood power into engines and Starside shields. Bring our primary cores to weapon systems; auxiliary systems have priority. Put subroutines to power the DRAKE battery; let's try and avoid a fight.'

A nod, yet nothing flooded to his retinal display. No outpour of data as his ship awoke, and the adrenaline of combat surged through it's veins at his behest, as the bridge crew simply gaped on at the monstrosity before them.

'That would be now, Seer. Jump to it!'

The bridge crew seemed to ignore the fact he had directed the command to a single member of their unit, as they collectively mumbled their apologies and made for the tasks each seemed to assign themselves; the _Dauntless'_ Command center was a compartmentalized one, designed to preserve at least a fraction of it's occupants if a direct hit had the fortune to find it amid the superstructure, and any of the ship's functions could easily be relegated to any one console, though there were always the one or two tasks each had taken to adopt by heart; the procedures hands learnt to accomplish on their own accord, without the mind's interference, or the presence of a capital ship barely a thousand meters off the _Dauntless_ ' Starside.

'Comm link established: patching it command deck.'

The metallic voice of his communications officer: a rather dour faced, and unceasingly irritated Geus, who had lost his voice during a rather routine surgery on his second windpipe, flooded the Bridgemaster's earpiece, giving him enough time to plant his feet firmly onto the deck before the signal was transmitted to his bridge's central camera.

'This is Eridus Providus, Bridgemaster of the Council flagship _Dauntless Resolve_ , of the 5th Legion. Cruiser; be advised you are currently trespassing in Council Space; identify yourself.

'This is the Star Destroyer _Righteous_ ,' the response came, 'Be advised you are interfering with a military operation of the First Order, and will be answerable to Supreme Leader Snoke if noncompliance is met. Deactivate your interdiction systems, and prepare to be boarded.'

Despite himself, Providus nearly laughed. Whether it was in response to the fact the idiots, no matter how well armed, thought to board a vanguard of the Council, or the simple detail that the speaker on the far side of the negotiations was using a voice distorter; he did not know, but he held the outburst for the lives under his charge. In retrospect, the graveled voice that challenged his vessel might have once given him pause, in its dismal failure to betray any identity, or weakness he could exploit, but Providus had spent too much time with the band of cloaked warriors within the holds of his vessel. Warriors whose faces remained a mystery, to his own eyes as much as they were to one another, behind black masks of steel, yet retained their humanity. Or rather, whatever title of integral morality one could attach to the respective species in question, for there were at least a half dozen that composed the Regiment he was charged with ferrying. It was almost as if an old friend had popped his head out the top of a tank that had previously driven itself up the street and into his home, and for a moment, Providus toyed with the possibility that perhaps he had finally gone completely insane. It certainly would not have been the first case of void madness, but for the moment at least, Providus could see. And to a man, or rather Krai, who no idea of what madness customarily encompassed, it was enough evidence to convince him of his sanity. For the time being, at least, before he dropped the guillotine upon his own neck.

'This is the _Dauntless_ , _Righteous_. Negative on a boarding action. I repeat, hold boarders. I apologise for the interdiction, and acknowledge this is a first contact scenario, but we too have a priority military objective that must be accomplished with all haste. We will relay your coordinates and drop a comm beacon to signal for a second Council vessel to assist in your repairs and formally initiate negotiations. Until then, I request you cease your foray into Council space, and hold your position until I can-'

He was cut off by a warning siren. He did not even need the Seer's warning to know his vessel was being targeted.

'Get repairs to the engine underway immediately,' the garbled voice on the far end of the link sneered, obviously in address to someone other than the Bridgemaster he had previously conversed with, 'and gut that impediment. With extreme prejudice.'

'They're targeting us, Bridgemaster-'

'All power to the DRAKE now!' Providus roared, planting his arms upon the command console before him with vehement resolve, 'Circulate a combat alert! We are under attack! Put atmospheric alert to all decks; anyone without an EVA suit in one mike is gonna have a real bad day; pump secondary and non-critical power to Starside shields and our dockside engines now! Life support, lighting, everything! Move, Guardsmen! Move!'

* * *

If she ever saw the blasted Crolute from the wastes again, Rey could not be certain if she would simply give into instinct and, in a probably futile effort, attempt to beat any sense into the Blobfish about the hazards of modifying any starship that was to serve any purpose beyond a display on a planet that received as few visitors as it did.

Unsurprising as it was, it was nonetheless an unwelcome surprise to find that the hyperdrive compressor of Unkar Plutt was only one of dozens of the little manipulations that had been visited upon the Millennium Falcon in it's years among uncaring hands. And after crash landing on the tundra of Starkiller base, more than a few of those 'upgrades' seemed to have unraveled under the strain of an actual flight. But few of the said implants could come close to the danger offered by Plutt's compressor; most strained the old vessel in their own diabolical fashions, but none quite matched the possibility of depositing the vessel from hyperspace at three different points in the galaxy. And with the course already plotted into the navicomputer by the recently awakened R2 unit that seemed to have followed every tale of the legendary Skywalker she now pursued, it seemed only prudent to ensure the ship was not about to break down at any moment.

True, it was probably not the wisest course of action to have left such repairs for the journey rather than in the safety of D'Qar's atmosphere, but with the Resistance arming for war, and the small outpost quickly transforming into a refuge for any battered ship of the New Republic's fleet to have survived the first strike of the Starkiller, Rey had figured that the risk was insufficient to get in the way of the war effort any longer than necessary, arguing that the ship had already endured one of the harshest landings known to galactic history.

Of course, she'd began to regret that as soon as one of the coolant pipes behind her head had blown only an hour into the transit, and since then, R2 had manned the controls, while she and the Wookie at her side combed the ship, tearing away any installation that might compromise the Falcon in the near future.

The most recent flaw to have fallen under their scrutiny was an old, barely functioning siphon that was drawing power from the Falcon's shield emitter to pump an excess into the primary hyperdrive. In theory at least, it was a solid addition to any warship that had been converted into a freighter; after all, it was a rare day that any fleet commander found a cargo ship, laden typically with illegally acquired goods, jumping headlong at a war fleet, and smugglers often prefered to outrun their hunters as opposed to fighting them.

In practice? Rey could already find at least dozen problems it could be causing them in the near future; the most potent of which were that facts that they would probably be shot on sight by any Star Destroyer; the siphon was converting power at an abysmal rate, probably taking more to charge the instrument than it managed to divert to the engines, and the slight issue that the eroded power line that connected it to the engines ran directly over the Falcon's fuel storage. The possible outcome of the last scenario was sufficient to prompt Rey to ensure it would remain in her imagination alone, as opposed to the moment it would invariably leak and spontaneously scatter them throughout the local sector.

Subsequently, it was not long before she found herself crawling through one of the lesser corridors of the ancient starship, trying her utmost best to avoid electrocution as she tried to uncouple the damnable power line, while Chewie threaded whatever equipment she had not been able to drag into the rabbit hole down after her.

Perhaps it was not even Plutt's doing, she sighed. After all, the Falcon had passed through more than a few unscrupulous hands since its disappearance in the years following the Battle of Endor, and she had little faith that any of the thieves had even a little more sense than her previous employer. That was at least until her hand hit a loose wire and she jolted back with a shock; more unpleasant images of Plutt's fate.

'Stupid,' she muttered, though more in disappointment at her own carelessness. Up above, her commotion did not seem to have gone unnoticed, and a low, concerned howl punctuated the air.

'It's all right Chewie,' she called, trying to remove any indication of strain from her voice that would indicate the recent accident, 'I'm alright.'

Another grunt; this time in a nearly skeptical manner, and Rey abandoned the pointless deception.

'Just managed to electrocute myself,' she replied in a half sigh. This time, the Wookie's response had recaptured the concern of his first call.

'Thanks, Chewie, but it's alright; I nearly got it.'

With a deeper breath than the exertion ahead would typically warrant, if one excluded the danger, she dug back into the innards of the Falcon, praying that Han would forgive her for the harm she'd visited upon his ship.

Han. She stopped, and withdrew.

She had known the man for perhaps a few days, but she had lived amid tales of his legends. He, and the other pillars of the Rebellion; Luke Skywalker, and his sister Leia Organa, had defined the tales that were told around the fire, or shady cantinas amid drunken tunes. And now she had finally encountered the man, to see him fade away.

To now mutilate his ship; one of the last remnants of his legacy, seemed to tread the line of disrespect, and Rey remained where she sat, in quiet contemplation of the life that might have been presented to her had she accepted the smuggler's offer. It would have meant not only freedom from a world she detested, drawn to only by the haphazard promise of her family's eventual return, but also direction. Strangely contradicting ideals, but Han's legacies had been enough to inform her of his immense knowledge of the universe. She would probably not have even hesitated to question even the most unimaginable command, had it come from his mouth, in the knowledge of his instinct, and judgement.

Now, he was gone, and with Chewie having always deferred to another on the basis of heading the ship, the mantle had apparently passed to Rey, and she was only beginning to grasp the fact that had Leia not given her explicit instruction to find Luke, she would be aimless. She was now effectively a captain of a vessel; a legendary one at that, and one she knew how to work, but as to how she was meant to use it, she was at a loss.

She had no idea of what she would have done next, and only pressing on in the hopes that Luke could offer a similar relief of the burden of responsibility in independence, Rey could understandably feel very small, in a tremendously large galaxy.

She must have taken a while, for she would only emerge from her thoughts when Chewie hollered once more, questioning again on her wellbeing.

Letting off a quick reply, Rey steeled herself, and returned to the siphon, telling herself it was only an act of restoring the vessel to it's former glory.

At least that way, Han might have forgiven her, as she tugged aside the cords, and unscrewed the remaining pair of screws that held the power line in place.

A few minutes later, and the siphon was uncoupled and removed, like the grisly entrails of a beast that had refused to die, or a parasite that had fought tooth and nail to remain with it's host.

It was ugly enough to pass for such; a crude piece of engineering that had little to deserve another second aboard the Falcon, or at least, that was what Rey believed Chewie had likened the impediment to as he had hauled it for the airlock to dispose of once they had completed the jump. It was a tad stronger an insult than the usually good-willed warrior, but Rey did not judge him for the outburst.

Even R2 seemed to have sense the glaring abnormality of Han's disappearance, for it seemed to be a growing habit of the droid to pass from room to room when it was no longer required at the controls, skittering along the beaten floor plates in search for...something. After speaking with a few of the veterans of the Rebellion; the face of the freedom fighters before the bureaucracies of the New Republic had forced them even further beneath the ground to found the Resistance, including on dour faced old man who had served on a desolate planet in the far reaches called Hoth, she could not be certain the droid was still searching for it's master. Certainly, it was informed well enough of the task at hand to locate the Jedi, but Rey would not have put it beyond the battered unit to have clung to a vague hope, that perhaps it's master roamed these corridors, hidden in plain sight; a fantasy one might have indulged if a droid could wonder. Maybe before the pursuit from Jakku, Rey would have scoffed at the prospect, but after enough time with BB-8, Rey had learnt droids would continue to surprise.

Besides, the droid's search for Luke would have sat far better with her than if it were searching for the ship's past owner. At least this way, she would not have to tell it the truth that both she and the Wookie knew, but avoided like the plague.

It would only tear the fragile dressing off the wound, and the pain would begin anew.

Rey tried to divert her thoughts away from the inquisitive droid, as she settled into the cockpit for her own shift on the console, before she set about adjusting the chair, for she was a good deal shorter than Chewie, and the late Han Solo.

* * *

'Impact shields are down: we're taking fire!'

'Reactor overload in sections seven, fourteen and fifteen! Repair teams reporting heavy casualties; requesting withdraw-'

His eyes narrowed upon the bastardized ship before him that was tearing his home apart, Providus gave the cries no heed. When the alerts threatened to overwhelm him, he simply set his implants to filter out those of lesser import; individual mourning was set aside for the time being, whilst the lives of many hung in the balance. The screams of those that had entrusted his knowledge to guide them to war, the fires that raged beneath his feet; the agony of his home; naught mattered now but the DRAKE at the heart of his vessel, and the shields that preserved it's rage from the wanton destruction of the laser batteries he now faced. It had been a true test of courage for Providus' allies: Krai, Geus, and Terinii alike, to hold their ground in the face of the terrifying barrage; accustomed to the conventional warfare of a small, isolated system far from the rest of the galaxy, none had witnessed a turbolaser fire before, much less the entire arsenal of a Resurgent class star destroyer. The impact shields of the _Dauntless_ , as resolute as ever, had endured the barrage, at least the first one; having dealt with projectile weapons on a nearly daily basis, it did not at any one point occur to Providus that the barrage of proton torpedoes that had slammed into his Starside flank might have devastated another vessel armed with the more advanced deflector shields utilized by his quarry, but the strain was telling as they faded away. A second salvo had quickly stripped them of their remaining dignity in short order, and tore away a good segment of his ship's hull in the process, savaging the _Dauntless_ with merciless fury as the turbolasers ripped open the titanium plate with ease, either tossing his crew to the void, or incinerating them where they stood in a brief, fleeting moment of agony before darkness took over.

Risking a glance away from the Destroyer, Providus watched the readings from the DRAKE battery climb; the space left before the meter reached it's capacity ticking away at the same pace at which his life was drawing ever closer to it's imminent end.

'Come on, _Daunt_ , you slippery piece of welded shit,' he muttered, grasping the railing that lined the elevated command deck as if it would sooth the battered soul of the mighty vessel he inhabited, 'hold it together, just a few more seconds.'

'We just took a hit on the fore hanger bays,' a Seer screamed, 'We've lost Hangar one, and Hangar two isn't responding. Starside Hangard Seven is reporting a fire; Ravens are requesting authorization to launch.'

'Hold the bastards where they lie,' Providus snapped, gesturing wildly at the monster before them all, 'you see that? They aren't getting any where near that thing without getting turned inside out. Put all auxiliary teams to fire suppression duty and withdraw the Ravens from the hangars.'

'Providus, Senior Raven Tererius is refusing to abandon his aircraft-'

'If the bastard wants to burn,' the Bridgemaster screamed, nearly incoherent amid his fury, 'he can burn when I need him to! If he still refuses to move, you authorize the auxiliaries to clobber the little flesh heap and drag him out of there! Is the DRAKE charged?'

'Eighty three percent.'

'Give crews authorization to fire at ninety percent, and cross check our initial scans of the ship: get me firing solution on the origin of the transmission we received earlier and send it to the DRAKE.'

He tore his eyes back to the Star Destroyer, letting out a soft groan as he watched another of those green light shows descend upon his vessel. It was strange to feel helpless, at the head of a capital ship, yet such was all he endured. If his gambit paid off, there would be no need for another shot, but if it failed: if even one calculation fell short, or the DRAKE found it's mark yet was halted by the Destroyer's own shields, or Great Father forbid, even penetrate those barriers only to ricochet off it's dense plate, he was a dead soul walking. Worse, he and every other living being aboard the _Dauntless_ would be dead; he had no other means to even scratch the titan if it failed: he had sacrificed nearly every point defense gun, missile silo and anti-ship battery across the _Dauntless_ ' hull in favor of the DRAKE at it's heart, and the Destroyer's onslaught had all but severed the power couplings that attached many of the said defenses to the vast network of reactors that continued to beat life throughout his ship. That is, those that had not overloaded and already gone nuclear: two had already blossomed on his savaged Starside flank, tearing large rents across the side of his flagship, and leaving nearly two thousand Iron Seers dead, and countless more auxiliaries, while another three three were already on a similar course to self annihilation.

This time, there existed not even a slither of shielding to mitigate the merciless barrage; Providus himself was thrown off his feet entirely, landing with an unforgiving crash against a console whose own Seer had been rendered inoperable by the blast, given the fact he was slumped across the floor bleeding from a blunt wound to the head.

As for Providus, the Bridgemaster was in little better condition as he attempted to rise, only to break into an agonizing fit, as blood ran from his mouth, and an immeasurable pain pulsed across his back. If the moment had afforded the luxury of time and an investigation, Providus would have found that the impact had broken nearly six of his ribs: two of which had been forced deep through his left lung, and scarred his tertiary heart, but thankfully, the Krai was spared the full knowledge of his predicament as he heard the words he had awaited for too long.

'DRAKE charged to ninety percent. Firing now.'

Deep below his foetal form, Providus felt the mighty gun unleash it's might in one fantastic display of firepower; one he loathed so greatly to have missed the sight of, wracked with effort to breath as he was. The Designated Rail-Augmented Kinetic Engagement battery; a pair of heavy cannons, upon which the very spine of his vessel had been built around, showed no quarter, as they had been shown by the steel monster at his door.

Though he did not see the cannon fire, from the steel floor upon which he had settled upon, Providus saw enough to know that the shot was good, as the Destroyer blossomed with fire; it shrieked and buckled as the two oversized rounds hurtled into it's side at a velocity only barely falling short of light speed, before it's shields overloaded, and collapsed all together. He could not differentiate the detonations beneath her hull that came from the explosive discharge of the monstrosity's shield capacitors, as their life was ripped from their fragile restraints with unyielding force, from the fires that engulfed the flagship as a direct gift of his first and last salvo. The DRAKE's rounds simply gutted the Destroyer, embedding themselves deep within it's construct, before they combusted in flame and fury, as they set to work, tearing themselves asunder to deliver the dozens of explosives held within their iron tombs.

The pair of oversized cluster charges should have finished his hunter, yet still the steel bulk remained, too bloodied to fight on, as it's decks dimmed, and one by one, the mighty guns that had ravaged his home fell silent once more, like the limbs of even the greatest warrior once his foe had separated his head; devoid of a mind and purpose to kill.

Providus could take some pride in that at least, as he felt another globule of blood pass between his lips amidst another hack. In the euphoria of the moment, it never occurred to him that his vessel was without weapons, power, oxygen, and enough food and water to last another month. Nor would any pollute that triumph for him either, for it was unfit for one of the Council's own to die in regret, as he closed his eyes, thinking of home.


End file.
